How It Came To Be: Wiki Loves Uniformed Services

I'm User:
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga from English Wikipedia;
fortunately and unfortunately my user name and my real name share the
same text. I have been contributing to Wikipedia and its sister
projects since December 2014. I work primarily on Indian military
history related topics and articles. Initially, I was focused on
creating articles rather than assessing them. My wiki journey can be
best described in two parts, before and after Train
The Trainer 2017.

The latter part
of 2016 proved to be a critical period of my Wiki journey. I was
credited with my first good article, first featured A-class article
and list, first featured list and, several Did You Know credits on
English Wikipedia. Later on, I was awarded the “Military
history newcomer of the year” for 2016. I was the first
Indian to receive the award. Additionally, I was selected to be the
“Featured Wikimedian of Month for January 2017” by Wikimedia
India.

As of January
2017, I have been contributing for nearly two years, and as far as I
have observed the military history topic area of India is one of the
most neglected areas. With two well known military historians from
India, Srikar Kashyap Pulipaka (User:StrikeEagle) and Colonel
Ashwin Baindur [retd.] (User: AshLin) on a semi Wiki break, I
was left to be the only regular contributor. In an attempt to
encourage more Wikipedians to work on this area, Indian military
history work group emerged as an initiative by the Military
history project. The work group closing in on a year
since its inception, has more than twenty-five members at present. As
the founder of the group, I aspire to incubate the group into an
independent task force under Military history project. One of the
major problems I faced while working on the military history articles
was regarding images. Though the images were accepted on Commons,
they were rejected at advanced levels of assessment i.e. A-class
review, FAC, FLC etc. One of the primary reasons for the problem is
the unclear copyright statement presented on the official websites of
the armed forces and various uniformed services. I had been thinking
for a long while to resolve this issue and TTT provided me with the
path to finds a solution for this. Train the Trainer (TTT) is one of
the best initiatives by Centre of Internet and Society - Access to
Knowledge. It is a three-day residential program to enhance the
trainer in experienced and well established Wikipedians through the
length and breadth of India. Prior to TTT 2017, I have only been
involved in online activities of Wikipedia, predominantly
contributing to Indian military history topics. I hardly knew about
the offline community of Wikipedia i.e. the grant structure of
Wikimedia Foundation, conduction of edit-a-thons, meet-ups, program
affiliates etc. Not only this, but also the Wikipedian contacts I had
were very sparse. Though I was selected to attend TTT 2016, I could
not attend to academic constraints. During TTT, I had rich exposure
to the wider Indian Wikimedia community and that of Indic language
projects. TTT also cleared many of the misconceptions I had of
Wikimedia, some them include the use of Harvard referencing style,
importance of offline events, etc.

Owing to the experience I decided to act on the problem. There is a
heavy need of images related to the uniformed services. So I
discussed my idea with Ravi Shankar Ayyakannu (User:Ravidreams),
coordinator of Wiki Loves Food and Manager for Strategic
Partnerships in Asia under Global Reach Team. Initially, I thought of
naming it Wiki Loves Armed Forces, Wiki Loves Security Services etc.
But with an intention to widen the scope, it was named as Wiki Loves
Uniformed services. Once finalized, I started creating necessary
pages and templates on Commons. Simultaneously, I worked on forming
the core team of coordinators and judges. I chose Suyash Dwivedi
(User:Suyash.dwivedi) and Mourya Biswas (User:Mouryan)
to be the Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator respectively, with
myself as the Lead Coordinator. The jury included Col. Ashwin Baindur
[retd.], Diego Delso (User:Poco a poco), Col. Ravi Shankar
Vasireddy [retd.] (Off-community) and Sirkar Kashyap Pulipaka.
After having done these tasks, I moved on to file a detailed rapid
grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation. The grants team was
very responsive and the grant was approved in a week. This initiative
gained good global support including the foundation’s staff, who
were happy to see a new Wiki Loves initiative budding.
However, till now there aren't as many images as expected. To
increase awareness about the program we’ve decided to implement a
new strategy of conducting photo walks with government permission.
Apart from that we’re also in contact with the Indian Navy to
donate their images to the contest. The deadline may extend for about
a month or so depending upon the stats. Personally, I see great
potential for this project, but the problem is one of Wikipedians'
response. I hope this initiative will be a great success and will be
taken up by fellow Wikimedians from others countries. I conclude by
thanking CIS-A2K for conducting innovative workshops and Wikimedia
India for their support to the project since its inception. I also
thank each and every unacknowledged finger behind this great
initiative.

The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of their
individual authors. Unless the opposite is explicitly stated, or unless
the opposite may be reasonably inferred, CIS does not subscribe to these
views and opinions which belong to their individual authors. CIS does
not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the views and
opinions of these individual authors. For an official statement from CIS
on a particular issue, please contact us directly.

Support Us

Please help us defend citizen and user rights on the Internet!

You may donate online via Instamojo. Or, write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. These charitable contributions will be towards the Institutional Corpus Fund of the Centre for Internet and Society.

Follow our Works

Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Amber Sinha, Executive Director, at amber[at]cis-india[dot]org or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Director, at sumandro[at]cis-india[dot]org, with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in.

In general, we offer financial support for collaborative/invited works only through public calls.

About Us

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.

Through its diverse initiatives, CIS explores, intervenes in, and advances contemporary discourse and regulatory practices around internet, technology, and society in India, and elsewhere.